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Families 175(Like I said, I barely know the computer. I don’t know how to use it. I don’t knowit. So, that is why I am worried, because sometimes I don’t even know what theyare doing.) (Translation by Lisa Tripp)Although parents, particularly mothers, feel responsible for monitoringand regulating their kids’ media engagements, they are often hamperedin their efforts by their children’s resistance to control, their own lack oftechnical expertise, and the subversion of their rules by other familymembers.Growing UpThe rules and boundaries surrounding new media typically begin to changeas kids grow up and develop judgment, “a process of critical evaluationthat develops as one matures, with help from parents” (Alters 2004, 114).As Liz’s mother explained to C. J. Pascoe (Living Digital):She’s going to be seventeen. She’s going to graduate next year. I think she needs tobe responsible. . . . Her dad would have it differently, but since I’m in control, andthey’re lucky that I am because I pretty much . . . I just look at them more as adults.They can figure things out. They’re not doing anything against the law. They’rehome. She’s a great student. You know?While there is a sense of a loosening of control tied to allowing teenagersto exercise their own judgment, it is clear that parents expect their teenagersto know and, to some degree, internalize their parents’ values. In thecase of games, parents typically allow kids to engage with different gaminggenres depending on how capable they think their children are in makingthese judgments. Somewhere between the ages of five and eight, kids(typically boys) tend to shift away from the edutainment genres of Leapsterand other desktop computer games and upgrade to the Nintendo DSor PSP, a transition that tends to occur when the family plans a lengthiercar or plane journey (see box 7.2). A few years later, in the kids’ preteenand early teen years, middle-class parents “give in” (as kids describe it),or determine that their kids are mature enough to exercise judgment (seeAlters 2004; Clarke 2004). As thirteen-year-old white teenager namedPeter discussed with Matteo Bittanti (Game Play), “I was not allowed toplay Grand Theft Auto when I was eleven because my parents felt that thecontent was inappropriate for me.” As Peter suggested, violence and violentvideo games remain a particularly important preoccupation, especiallyfirst-person shooters (see box 5.2). Another gamer, twenty-two-year-old